HELP ME BUILD A SCHOOL LIBRARY

Think back to your middle school and high school days. Think about how many of your friends and siblings ever failed a grade. In my case, I can count that number on one hand. Now, imagine a school where less than 50% of the students pass. This is the reality that I’m facing in my school in Orodara.

In the 2010-2011 school year, 48% of my students passed middle school and were able to continue to high school, and a shocking 24% of my students passed their senior year of high school! These numbers can be attributed to any number of things: extremely large class sizes, overworked and underpaid teachers, insufficient teacher training, or a lack of textbooks. Unfortunately, most of these things are problems that I do not have the ability to tackle, but luckily, there is one that I can: the lack of books.



Over the past year, I have spent countless hours in meetings with my administration, my teachers’ union, and my parents’ association to come up with a way we can solve this problem. The answer is to build a school library. This not only gives the students a way to claim ownership over their education, but it also gives the teachers new resources that were previously unavailable to them.

Currently, students spend hours of in-class time copying intricate biology diagrams, or complicated math equations. Now that students will have access to textbooks, this time can be better utilized. They can also do research, or simply read for fun. Teachers used outdated or incorrect textbooks for their lesson planning. For example, one history book says that America has 55 states. How can a developing country develop when they cannot even educate their own citizens? Education is the first and most critical step of development.



My school has been able to hire a librarian, delegate a student committee to deal with library problems, and put aside about $430 for books. In order to get this library up and running, I need your help! Your money will buy books, maps, shelves and tables. 100% of your money will go directly to the benefit of my students.

If you are interested in helping, please go to https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=686-162

Le Tour de Burkina 2011

August kicked off the 2nd annual “Tour de Burkina”, where volunteers bike 1,700 kilometers in 23 days. The point of the tour is to raise money to support Gender and Development projects, such as girls’ camps to promote self esteem, or helping a women’s group raise money. You can follow a day to day update of their progress at burkinabiketour.blogspot.com.

Biking 1,700 kilometers is not something that would interest me, but I hosted the bike tour on August 31st. My town was their first official stop. This included housing and feeding 10 volunteers and organizing an awareness campaign for them to attend. They arrived at my house after 2 hours and 50 kilometers with no problems (except a little mud) and no injuries. Unfortunately, I wasn’t as lucky. I was biking 3 minutes down the road to meet them when I had a small bike accident. I was fine, except for a few cuts. I must admit that my ego was bruised when I arrived covered in blood, dirt and sweat to meet this group of volunteers.

My nearest volunteer neighbor came in for the day to help me host, and organize all of this. We decided to do a theater presentation. There were two different skits, which were based around the themes of girls staying in school, nutrition, and family planning. We had about 12 young girls who were the actresses, and were diligently practicing daily for their big performance. We had been advertising the presentation for a few weeks on the radio and telling as many people as we could. The presentation started at 2:00 pm, but because this is West Africa, that really means about 3:00. Although I know this, I was nervous when there was not a single person in the room at 3:00, but luckily, by 3:30, the room was packed with about 70 people, plus the bike tour volunteers, which I consider a success.

Dogon Country, Mali

This week I went on one of the most amazing and challenging vacations of my life. Being a PCV in West Africa, you constantly hear about Dogon country in Mali. All I knew about it was that it was some type of mountain formation, and a lot of volunteers hiked it. I really wasn’t all that interested in hiking mountains for a week, but I got invited by a fellow volunteer and figured, hell, why not. So, I was off… headed for Mali.

As I was sitting in the taxi, sweating because it was the middle of the desert, we drove over a hill and I got my first glimpses of Dogon country. I immediately realized why volunteers come here and realized this was going to be an incredible trip.

The Dogon people, up until very recently (1960’s) lived in mud houses built into the side of mountains. At about that time, the forest at the base of the mountains was disappearing and the pygmy people who lived in the forest migrated to the DRC, which allowed the Dogon people to move out of their cliff houses to the base of the mountains. Luckily, their houses and mountain-side villages are still intact today.



The Dogon people were 100% animist. Today, they are still mainly animist, but there are also Catholics and Muslims as well. During the trip, we got to see a lot of their ‘fetishes’ (black magic). When we first arrived in Dogon, we saw an amazing waterfall. Our tour guide, Oumar, informed us that the waterfall is cursed. The Dogon believe the waterfall is sacred, and therefore do sacrifices for it. Last year, despite the warnings of the Dogon not to swim in the waterfall, tourists did swim there. According to Oumar, when the tourists got in the water, the water turned boiling hot, which scalded and killed the tourists immediately. This is not the first or only story about the sacred waterfall killing naïve tourists.



Oumar, our tour guide, is from Dogon. He not only speaks English, but knows everything there is to know about Dogon. He was an incredible guide and made our trip what it was.



Because I knew nothing about Dogon before going there, I was not anticipating how challenging the trip would be. I thought we would just saunter along the mountains for a few days, passing villages and seeing the mountains houses. This could not have been more wrong. We hiked into the mountains and to the mountain peaks. If this were America, you would definitely have to sign a death waiver, or have special mountain climbing certifications to do this. It was, without a doubt, the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Day 2 of our climb, Oumar points to a crevasse at the top of the mountain, and says, “You see that gap up there? That’s where we’re climbing today”. I thought he was fucking with me, but a few hours and 3 blisters later, I was sitting at the top of the mountain looking down on the village we just came from.



Never in my life have I been so scared that I couldn’t move… until this trip. At one point, we reached a ladder carved out of wood resting between two rocks. Once again, I thought Oumar was fucking with me when he said we had to climb that ‘ladder’. I put one foot on the ladder, and made the biggest mistake ever… I looked down. I looked down into nothing-ness. There was nothing below the ladder! At this point, I really didn’t think I could make it. I thought I was going to have to turn around. Luckily, that fear lasted about 5 seconds and I was able to push myself through it. Then, thankfully I was at the other side.



I could continue writing about this trip, but instead, I want you to see the pictures. I uploaded the rest onto my snapfish account and they’ll do a hell of a lot better explaining this trip then I ever could, so enjoy :)
http://www2.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=3567594022/a=1579671022_1579671022/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/

The Arrival of the New Trainees

Two years ago, I was finishing up training in Guinea. I was glad to be done, and at the same time looking forward to coming back to stage the next year as a trainer. Then, I was evacuated. The next year, when I should have been a trainer, I was a trainee again, sitting through the same exact sessions I had the previous year. It was torturous… to say the least. At the end of my second training, I wanted nothing to do with coming back to training as a trainer. I wanted to be far away from training. Then, after a few months at site, I changed my mind. I remembered why I wanted to be a trainer to begin with. I wanted to help the new trainees who come to Africa with big goals and ambitions, then arrive here and are sick, scared, hot, tired and confused all the time. I wanted to help them and share my own personal experiences and tell them that it really isn’t that hard and despite what you think now, you will get used to it, and you will be comfortable living alone here. So, I applied to be a trainer and luckily, they chose me.

Each trainer works 2 weeks of the training, and my 2 weeks are split up between the beginning and the end. I chose it this way because I thought it would be fun to see the trainees at these two points of stage and see how they’ve changed. It’s really amazing how quickly one can adapt living into a completely new environment and being completely comfortable in it.

Last week was my first week at training. I was looking forward to it. I was excited to meet the new trainees. As a volunteer trainer, we are responsible for working with the program director of education to plan all technical sessions. Because this was only the first week, there weren’t many technical sessions, so there wasn’t a lot for me to do. It was mostly core sessions, like health, safety, etc. I was there with 2 other volunteers, and we were in charge of only three sessions: Intro to Education in Burkina Faso, Project Framework of the Education Program, and Demyst Preparation. The first two have to do with the basics of the Peace Corps Burkina Faso program in general. They are boring sessions, but important for the trainees to learn at the beginning. The third session was about Demyst, or ‘demystification’, which is when the trainees in groups of 3-4 to volunteer sites for a few days to see what the life of a volunteer is life. I have to admit, the most exciting part of the week was that the volunteer house at the training site had a brand new oven, which I used to make cookies for the trainees. On Thursday, the trainees left and headed out for demyst, so before I knew it, I was finished with my first week of training.

But, then came the fun part, demyst. I had 4 trainees and their French teacher at my house for 4 days. I was nervous because I wanted to give them a good impression of Burkina, and wanted to get them excited to be a volunteer, and I didn’t want any of them to get sick, it was only their first week. Luckily, I was at the training site, so I was able to travel with them back to my site. This made their lives significantly easier and less chaotic. Traveling here can be extremely difficult if you don’t know what you’re doing. Thankfully, we made it to my site with no problems. For the next few days, I showed them around town and introduced them to the life of a volunteer. We went on a school tour, to the market, to a women’s association, and of course, we went to drink dolo. A lot of times, trainees come back from demyst sick and knowing where they don’t want to go for their service. When my demyst-ers left, none of them were sick and they all wanted to come live in my region! I think this means I succeeded in planning a good demyst and showed them a good introduction to life as a volunteer.

An Unplanned Cross-Country Trip

I’m currently in Ouaga for training, TOT (training of trainers). It’s a weeklong training that prepares us volunteers along with the rest of the Peace Corps staff to become trainers for the new trainees coming in. This is really exciting because we look forward to new groups of trainees who arrive only 2 times per year. This time, being a seasoned and experienced volunteer, I am a trainer for the new trainees. Their training will be different from ours because the education program has completely changed and been restructured (for the better, in my opinion) since last year. Due to this, their stage is longer than ours was, and they go through a lot of significant training that I never had, but wish I did. We are also welcoming a brand new sector this time, an Agriculture program. But, this is neither here nor there. What I really want to tell you about is my unplanned and unwanted tour of Burkina.

Normally, my trip from my site to the capital is about 7 hours, in an air conditioned bus (NOT a bush taxi… thank god), and on a paved road (a luxury most volunteers do not have). So, all in all, my trip, although rather long, is much better than a lot of other peoples. Well, 3 days before I’m supposed to be in Ouaga, a PC staff calls me and tells me that due to security reasons, I cannot travel my normal route and am forced to find a new one. I, of course, have no clue to a secondary route, so I’m frantically calling other volunteers to try to find one. Unfortunately, there was only one option. A route that took me on a cross country trip, which not only costed an arm and a leg, took 3 days, but was entirely bush taxis. I was rushing around trying to get my things together because I realized I had to leave ASAP or I wouldn’t be there in time. All my clothes were hanging on the line to try. Thank god it’s a million degrees here and they dry in about an hour ha. And for all of you that know me, you know that I am not a light packer, but due to the unusual circumstances surrounding this trip, I had no other option. I know my Dad would be proud of the fact that I only brought one bookbag and a purse for 10 days away.

My first leg of the trip wasn’t too bad. It was only 2 hours on a bush taxi. But, I was squished between a big woman and crying baby. I couldn’t move an inch, so in true west African spirit, they fit in 5 more people. Now, I’m holding the crying baby while the mom is holding the taxi door close, and a brown liquid is dripping on me from the ceiling. Super. Thank god it was only 2 hours ha.

The next part of my trip was significantly longer. I woke up at 5:30 because I had no clue where the taxi left from or what time, so I figure it would be better for me to get there earlier. Thankfully, it was easier than I thought. I arrived at the taxi station, and a man says, “Hey! White person, where are you going?” I tell him, and he tells his apprentice to take my bag and puts in on a taxi and voila… I have a taxi. Easy as that. Now, I just have to wait. Normally, in all my taxi experiences, they do not leave the station unless the car is completely full. Then, they will add 5 more people, a goat, some chickens, and a man hops on the roof. This could take 30 minutes or 5 hours. You never know. I ask the driver when he’s leaving and he says, “Tout suite!” (Very soon). I ask if he actually means very soon, or very soon after the car is full. He assures me that no, we will be leaving very soon. I’m doubtful. Then 30 minutes later, he says, “Hey! White person, get in the car, we’re leaving.” So, I head over, and hop in and to my surprise, I’m the only person in the car. And, not to my surprise, the driver was not the owner of the car, but his 15 year old apprentice. We leave the station and pull over about 3 minutes later. I ask what’s going on, and, of course, they don’t speak French, so I have no clue. And I’m still the only person in the taxi. Eventually, the owner comes, and we head off… to the gas station. “Hey! White person, we need you to pay so we can get gas.” I hand over my fare, he fills up an empty bucket with gas so we don’t have to stop along the road, and finally, we’re off for real. About 2 hours later, we pull over in a town, and the taxi driver hops out of my taxi, and without saying a word, hops in another passing taxi going in the opposite direction. What the heck?! I swear, sometimes, I do not understand Burkina Faso and the people here. How can you just leave me, the taxi and the apprentice on the side of the road without saying anything?? I sit and wait and wait, and then I go to pee (which ended up being very complicated because, again, no one spoke French and so they couldn’t understand what I wanted. It ended up being a very embarrassing pantomime with me squatting near the ground pretending to pee.) An hour and a half later, the driver saunters over ( don’t worry… he just had to eat), hops in and again, we’re off. For 20 minutes until we have to stop again. This time, the driver and the apprentice hop out and TAKE A NAP! I’m not kidding, they took a nap on the side of the road for 30 minutes! Finally, after them waking up due to me “gently” throwing stones at them to wake them, they get in and we continue. When, of course, 30 minutes later, we have to stop again to pick up some people. This took about 20 minutes because it took 5 men to heave a bag of rotted meat onto the roof of the taxi. I can only assume, they were planning on selling this meat in the city. In a country where deodorant doesn’t exist and latrines do, bad odors don’t faze me that often, but holy shit, that rotting meat… I honestly thought I was going to throw up in the taxi. And, to make matters worse, they were heaving the bag up on my side of the car, so the blood and random pieces were dripping down my window, where they dried instantly due to the scorching heat and I was forced to look at them for the rest of the trip. Again, we’re off, and this time, only 7 hours since leaving my original destination, we finally make it there. A fellow volunteer met me at the station and the first thing he said to me was, “Why did your taxi take so long?”

The next day, I wake up really early and start on my third and final leg of the journey. This, thank god, was a bus and a rather long trip, which I was thankful for because that means the bus will be air conditioned. HA! Once again, I was wrong. The volunteer warns me that this transport company is horrible and to be ready. So, I get there really early and buy my ticket. The bus was supposed to leave at 8, and, of course, the bus arrived at 8:20 full of people. I head over and wait for the people to get off the bus, which is when I realize that the people on my bus have already forced themselves onto the bus. They, literally, push people out of the way to get on the bus. Despite being the first person there, I was one of the last people to make it on the bus. There are no assigned seats, so if you’re the last person on the bus, you will have to stand for the entire 6 hour bus ride. In my case, I was seated between two very large and loud African women who insisted on getting off the bus at every single stop to buy a snack to eat on the bus, one of which was fried chicken. You know, an easy, on-the-go snack. So, I’m trying my best to sleep so I can pass the time easier. Despite it being so hot you want to die, the trip went smoothly with no big hiccups and I made it to Ouaga on time.

After that really long trip, I decided that I deserved to eat well, and so, this week while being here, I’ve been splurging… eating anything with cheese and chocolate ha. Unfortunately, my week is about over and my wallet is significantly smaller, and now I have to head back to site.

Witch Doctors, Charms and Spells

One of the most fascinating aspects of African culture is their religion. In Burkina, about 60% of people are Muslim, 40% are Catholic, and 100% are animists. They believe that spirits can move all objects, such as animals, trees and rocks. I have heard stories of people being arrested or even killed because other believed they were ‘skin changers’. They believe that humans can take animal form, especially cats, to carry out revenge. If the act was carried out while a human was in their animal form, they cannot be held responsible because it wasn’t them who carried out the task.

The Burkinabe believe the spirits here are very powerful, but can be pleased with offerings or animal sacrifices. I have witnessed several animal sacrifices for the land to remain plentiful, for the rivers to continue running with water, or for farms to have a lot of crops. The spirits can bring about health, happiness, wealth, or a variety of other positive things.

I have also been witness to the outcomes of unhappy spirits. Almost every accident or illness is attributed to a bad spirit who has been sent by someone. When someone falls sick, before taking them to a hospital, they will be taken to a marabout, or more commonly known as a witch doctor. They believe that you became ill because you did something bad to someone else. Then, this person sought out a witch to send a curse your way.

A few months ago, there was a young man staying with my neighbors’ for a few weeks. Towards the end of his stay, he started acting very strange. He wouldn’t sleep at all. He would wander the river behind my house, the area traditionally known to be a sacred place for witches. He refused to drink water or eat any of their food. His calm demeanor suddenly changed. My neighbors’ family became very stressed out about this, and called his family to come immediately. They explained to me that he came from a pagan family, and his recent change in behavior was due to that. Someone had cursed him. His family came and took him to a marabout where they carried out a traditional ceremony to remove the curse. I tried to convince them to let me come and meet the witch doctor and see the traditional ceremony, but they wouldn’t let me. Apparently, afterwards, he was cured and returned to his life as normal.

The town I live in has a significant pagan community. When I first found this out, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I half expected to meet someone who dressed in black and did spells, like in stereotypical movies. Of course, I had to meet one to learn more about them and their beliefs. I did so rather quickly and easily, and after several conversations found that it is nothing more than a belief in several gods and spirits. They believe witches can curse people, or bring about good things. They believe that marabouts can in fact remove the curses.

Ever since I arrived here, I’ve been hearing about this ‘pagan mask ceremony’ that takes place in May. Well, now it’s May and the ceremony has arrived. I’ve learned that for an entire week, the town shuts down. Everything closes and no one can leave their houses due to the sacred and secret ceremony. The pagan men wear masks and go around to all the parts of the town to do ‘fetishes’, or curses. In this case, they are good curses. They are blessing the town and the people. But here comes the weird part, no one outside of their religion can see this. If you see by accident, they will curse you or kidnap you for the duration of the ceremony. If you see on purpose, they will send a curse that will kill you. For an entire week, they cover every inch of the town with their blessings. They wear masks, play flutes and drums, and they dance. Needless to say, I want to avoid all curses so I’m leaving town haha.

At first, I thought people were bullshitting me. I didn’t believe in any of this ‘black magic’ nonsense and thought it was all a hoax. I’ve talked to a lot of people about this subject, and I haven’t come across one person who doesn’t believe in it. I thought that maybe the more educated people who live in cities would think this is fake but they don’t. On the contrary, they are afraid of it. If nothing about these witches, curses and witch doctors are true then why do people still believe in them after hundreds of years?

Appreciating the Differences

I started a correspondence program between some of my students and a class from Philadelphia. As soon as I collected the letters from my students, I had at least 5 students ask me every single day whether I received the responses yet. I felt like I could sympathize with my parents from our long car trip days to Chicago, “Are we there yet? I’m hungry! When are we stopping?” Considering there’s a significant time gap in mail to and from the states, I heard this question a lot. Well, this week, I finally received the letters, and I was as excited to tell my students that they arrived as they were to hear that they arrived.

I was impressed with my students’ ability to translate the letters from English to French, considering they are only in their second year of English. But, I ran into some unforeseen questions, questions I wasn’t expecting.

One American student wrote in the letter, “In America, we have malls. Malls are where teenagers hang out.” So, then my student asked, “What’s a mall?” How do you explain this concept to a kid from a developing country? A country where the only places to buy clothes are vendors on the side of the road who sell used clothes that people in America don’t want. (But, I’ll admit, I search through those side-of-the-road clothes piles and have had some good finds)

The next topic was snow. The American students wrote about the four seasons, which is always an interesting topic because the climate here is so extremely difficult. The students here know the word snow. They know it translates to “la neige”, but they don’t have a damn clue what that actually is. So, I’m trying to explain to them that it’s frozen water, but not like ice. It’s soft, and you can play with it. I think I confused them so much it would have been better for me to just say I don’t know what it is. That conversation was difficult enough, imagine the conversations I had afterwards involving snowmen and snowball fights. If anyone can tell me how to explain this concept to these kids, I would appreciate it. Better yet, can anyone send me a snow machine hahah.

The last thing they couldn’t comprehend was how big schools in America are. One student wrote that he was in classroom number 113. Then, my students asked what does that mean? I explained that every classroom has a number so you know where to go. In my middle/high school, there are 704 students, 7 grades and 7 classrooms. So, when I try to explain that there are many different classes for each grade and each one has a number, they were blown away. They couldn’t believe there was a school with 113 classrooms in it.

It’s not that I don’t recognize the differences, but I’ve lived here long enough to accept them. I forget about the differences, and so when I get questions like, “What’s a mall?”, “What’s a snowman?”, or “There are 113 rooms in one building?!?”, it puts me back in check. It reminds me how different the lives of people here are compared to the complicated lives we live in America. Is one way better than another? No. But, one way does have malls haha.